The Height of Prejudice: studies

Showing posts with label studies. Show all posts

Common Misconceptions About Height

Taller is healthier.
Failing to reach one's maximum height is linked to undernourishment, but short stature itself is not unhealthy when genetic. For example, short people live longer on average[1][2]. Being taller has also been linked to cancer and collapsed lungs. More research on this here.

Height is mostly dietary.
"...about 60 to 80 percent of the difference in height between individuals is determined by genetic factors, whereas 20 to 40 percent can be attributed to environmental effects, mainly nutrition.". One can see this in how certain families, like those of Manute Bol or Steven Adams, are all extremely tall. In Manute's case, he reached a height of 7'7 despite being malnourished (although he may have gotten even taller had he not been). Point is, just because someone is very tall doesn't mean they were fed correctly.

Every younger generation gets taller.
The average American has not gotten taller in the last 50 years. In fact, average height in the medieval ages was only slightly shorter than it is now. If you've been noticing how youth are tall for their age nowadays, it's because kids today hit puberty sooner.

Short men are angrier on average.
This study found that tall men fly off the handle more quickly. Every other study I've seen on this topic either didn't test for aggression, or tested women rather than men, tested wild animals, etc. Examples of these more questionable studies: http://archive.is/cYusN

Every human being innately prefers tall people.
They've done height studies on various tribal cultures, and these people don't care about height the same way modern society does.

Height is viewed no differently than baldness, big noses, etc.
None of these other groups are labeled with a complex or syndrome the moment they display aggression or ambition. Sperm banks ban all men below average height, but they do not ban men based on the Norwood Scale. Height affects the ability to defend oneself during physical altercations, most other superficial traits do not. The differences go on.

Height is a good indicator of IQ.
Most sources say the correlation coefficient between height and IQ is 0.1 or 0.2. This is considered a weak correlation, which makes using height to gauge IQ virtually pointless. Some of these studies are also conducted on children. If a bunch of youth are the same age, but some receive growth spurts sooner, these taller kids will have more developed brains. Yet these researchers ignore that in order to claim tall adults make more money due to higher IQ (even though simply controlling for IQ shows that it's not the reason for the height premium: [1][2]). These IQ/height studies are also intra-racial, which means they fail to address why Asians for example are typically shorter than Westerners, yet they consistently score higher on IQ tests.

Men and women are equally strict about height.

The average man's ideal height difference is for the woman to be 1 inch shorter. On the other hand, women desire men to be 8 inches taller on average.
"Nearly half of men in the study indicated that their tallest acceptable date could be taller than them or their height (24 and 23 percent, respectively), while 53 percent required their date to be shorter than them. But a whopping 89 percent of women said the shortest person they would date would still have to be taller than them. Only seven percent would accept someone who was their height, and just four percent would allow for a shorter guy."
For online dating, it's been found that "women care quite a bit more about the height of their partners than vice-versa."
Study: "Women want taller men more than men want shorter women."
According to this study on the top 10 words to include on your dating app bio, "the top word for female users was "love" and the most-swiped right male users had "6'" in their bio". Height is nowhere to be found on men's wish list.
Google "sperm bank requirements" then "egg donor requirements." Both short and tall women are not excluded from participating, but any male below average height is.

Height has never played an important role in being targeted.

"At the start of the 20^th century, most of the Rwandan population belonged to the Hutu ethnic group, who were traditionally crop-growers. Over many centuries, Rwanda attracted another group, traditional herdsmen, the Tutsis, from northern Africa... It wasn’t until European colonists arrived during the 1950s, that a divide developed between the two groups. The Europeans saw the Tutsis, who were taller with European ‘aristocratic’ appearances and, as was the practice of the time, selected this group to be both privileged and educated." - Source..."When RTLM (Radio Télévison des Milles Collines) began broadcasting on July 8, 1993... The RTLM called for the Tutsi to "cut down the tall trees," a code phrase which meant for the Hutu to start killing the Tutsi." - Source
According to one of Kim Jong Il's former tutors, the leader used pamphlets advertising wonder-growth drugs to lure small people into traps, from where they would be deported to "uninhabited islands" to remove their "substandard" stock from the genepool. - Source
"The one noticeable similarity with almost all serial killer victims is their short height and low weight. "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue" should be the serial killer theme song. These small lightweight victims are easy to attack, easy to beat up, easy to carry or drag, easy to put in the trunk of a car, and easy to dispose of. Big victims are far too much work. Smallish men, smallish women, and children are easy for the killer too handle. This is one reason why the top choices for women serial killers are invalids and babies." - Killing for Sport: Inside the Minds of Serial Killers
More on this topic here.

Interesting Statistics About Height and Mating

I don't regularly post about dating on this blog, but I found some interesting stats that I wanted to talk about.

According to a study from Poland based on medical records, tall men have notably greater reproductive success than short men. This other study found the same. The only source that paints a less dramatic picture is this one, where they say short men only have two fewer partners compared to tall men, but that's from a self-reported online survey where even the page itself admits the faults of such a method.

Whatever the case, if we look at men with the fewest partners, I think this helps explain why there's a noticeable amount of males (such as those in the incel community) complaining about height in the sexual market. Keep in mind how one in three young men receive no intimacy all year nowadays (although this is also just a survey, so how much weight it holds depends on who you're asking). Either way, the point is that while a short guy with five partners may not care that his tall counterpart has seven, a short male with zero partners might have had one or two by now had he been taller. Inversely, many of the tall men out there who have only had a couple of partners might still be virgins had they been a foot shorter. I also wonder how old the participants in these studies are, because in recent times, researchers claim the Dutch had a height increase due to women mostly choosing the tallest guys, and men who list their height as 6’ in their bios get the most matches in online dating (keep in mind around 40% of couples today allegedly first met online). I wouldn't be surprised if dating was easier for short men in the past, before online dating, sexual liberation, and higher income gave women more options.

This is also only looking at the quantity and not the quality. If we look at Harvey Weinstein's partner count, it's probably more than a handful, but how many of those women genuinely found him attractive? If some ugly old guy used money to sleep with 100 women, is he more attractive than a male model who wooed fewer women using his looks? I've seen some guys cite research claiming women orgasm more with wealthy men, but this was later debunked by the researchers themselves. If there's any link between wealth and pleasing women, it's probably due to how tall men are more likely to be richer.

Fact of the matter is, apparently women report happier marriages with tall husbands, and infidelity studies show that when women cheat, they are more likely to do so with someone who is taller than their official partner. Also, short men do more housework compared to tall men, but men who do more chores tend to receive less sex.

Short men also have a 24% lower chance of earning less than their spouse, which is curious considering how tall men make more money on average, so you would think tall men would be the ones less likely to be poorer than their wives. The researcher of these findings theorizes:

"On the income side, if you think of marriage as a market and tallness as a valuable commodity, short men “make up” for lacking it by earning more money. If you take the model further, the authors write, the results indicate that by “the perspective of relationship exchange models, this indicates that the tallest men exchange their attractive attribute (height) for better-educated spouses, while short men are unable to do so.”

"Short men have a 24% lower chance of earning less than their spouse, and are less likely to be equal earners. Each additional inch of individual height for a man is negatively related to proportional income with a shorter spouse."

“This further confirms an existence of height-based status exchange in which short men compensate for their lower physical status with higher proportional earnings, while tall men appear more likely to use their status to attract women with higher relative earnings,” the authors write."

Laughs About Heightism, Then Runs Off Without Another Word When Hit By The Truth Bomb

https://www.reddit.com/r/short/comments/76m8g7/im_personally_offended/dofu1g1/

😂😂

Again: https://www.reddit.com/r/short/comments/8osx9z/im_confused_about_the_definition_of_systemic_do/e05ubxz/

Stereotypes and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

The following is quoted from here: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wsu-sandbox/chapter/prejudice-and-discrimination/

When we hold a stereotype about a person, we have expectations that he or she will fulfill that stereotype. A self-fulfilling prophecy is an expectation held by a person that alters his or her behavior in a way that tends to make it true. When we hold stereotypes about a person, we tend to treat the person according to our expectations. This treatment can influence the person to act according to our stereotypic expectations, thus confirming our stereotypic beliefs. Research by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) found that disadvantaged students whose teachers expected them to perform well had higher grades than disadvantaged students whose teachers expected them to do poorly.

Consider this example of cause and effect in a self-fulfilling prophecy: If an employer expects an openly gay male job applicant to be incompetent, the potential employer might treat the applicant negatively during the interview by engaging in less conversation, making little eye contact, and generally behaving coldly toward the applicant (Hebl, Foster, Mannix, & Dovidio, 2002). In turn, the job applicant will perceive that the potential employer dislikes him, and he will respond by giving shorter responses to interview questions, making less eye contact, and generally disengaging from the interview. After the interview, the employer will reflect on the applicant’s behavior, which seemed cold and distant, and the employer will conclude, based on the applicant’s poor performance during the interview, that the applicant was in fact incompetent. Thus, the employer’s stereotype—gay men are incompetent and do not make good employees—is reinforced. Do you think this job applicant is likely to be hired? Treating individuals according to stereotypic beliefs can lead to prejudice and discrimination.

Another dynamic that can reinforce stereotypes is confirmation bias. When interacting with the target of our prejudice, we tend to pay attention to information that is consistent with our stereotypic expectations and ignore information that is inconsistent with our expectations. In this process, known as confirmation bias, we seek out information that supports our stereotypes and ignore information that is inconsistent with our stereotypes (Wason & Johnson-Laird, 1972). In the job interview example, the employer may not have noticed that the job applicant was friendly and engaging, and that he provided competent responses to the interview questions in the beginning of the interview. Instead, the employer focused on the job applicant’s performance in the later part of the interview, after the applicant changed his demeanor and behavior to match the interviewer’s negative treatment.

In regards to height prejudice, the self-fulfilling prophecy stems from society's treatment of shortness, such as stereotypical portrayals of short men with a complex (like in Shrek). When any short man becomes indignant over this, people label him with said complex.

As for the confirmation bias aspect, short men are the least likely to be aggressive, but people have the "angry short man" stereotype already in their heads and thus subconsciously look out for this. They could see a hundred angry men of average or tall height and not bat an eye, but the moment one short man rubs people the wrong way, it's "typical short man syndrome."

I've already written some blog posts on how people think it's the behavior itself that reinforces a stereotype, but in reality it is humanity's psychological flaws that cause this. When it comes to height, there is the added fact that humans associate size with power and authority. This is why when someone is important, we say "a man of his stature." This means short men who display assertiveness or aggression are often met with repulsion from the masses. People then subconsciously convince themselves that it's short men who have the problem, and that way any discrimination is justified.

Women Are More Likely to Be Attacked by an Intimate Partner Than a Stranger

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/most-murders-of-american-women-involve-domestic-violence_us_5971fcf6e4b09e5f6cceba87

http://elitedaily.com/news/intimate-partner-violence-female-homicide/2024463/

When coupled with statistics about domestic abuse in general, the common idea of a woman dating the largest male for protection doesn't seem as great as on paper. More people need to be educated about these statistics. Also interesting when you consider how people point towards a bad personality when a guy is single.

Study: Effects of Beauty

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/01/science/effects-of-beauty-found-to-run-surprisingly-deep.html?pagewanted=1

Excerpts:

Dr. Berscheid said the importance of physical attractiveness is growing and will continue to grow as increases in geographic mobility, frequent job changes and divorce subject more people to ''onetime'' or ''few-time'' interactions with others, in which they are judged on the basis of first impressions.

Dr. Berscheid believes there is a hazard inherent in denying the impact of physical attractiveness: ''Unattractive children who are unpopular may wrongly attribute their lack of popularity to some flaw in their character or personality,'' she says. Such an error, she believes, could result in lasting and painful scars.

This is from 1981, believe it or not. The part I bolded is what I found most important. Things like the halo effect and just-world fallacy cause many people to blame someone's personality, when really, it's often simply their looks.

Study: Extremely Positive People Aren't as Good at Empathy

"People with extremely sunny attitudes find it difficult to empathize with people who are recounting a negative experience, according to a study recently published at PLOS ONE. Ironically, positive people also reported being better at empathizing than did people who labelled themselves as slightly less than bubbly." - http://archive.is/iX9fC

Has Online Dating Affected Beauty Standards?

Tinder:

"Female Tinder usage data was collected and statistically analyzed to determine the inequality in the Tinder economy. It was determined that the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men."

OkCupid:

"women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh...
Females of OkCupid, we site founders say to you: ouch! Paradoxically, it seems it’s women, not men, who have unrealistic standards for the “average” member of the opposite sex."

Basically, my theory is that online dating has given women many more options than they had back in the day, so now they're pickier. Even if a woman doesn't use online dating, she knows that option is always there.

"Short Men and Heavier Women Earn Less, Can Blame DNA"

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/08/health/short-men-heavy-women-genes/index.html

It's disturbing how this is framed like some eugenics issue ("can blame DNA"). Not only do these articles often take a flippant tone, with lame height puns like "Short men do tend to get the, well, short end of the stick," but they always conveniently leave out the following:

"We show that height has a significant effect for the occupational sorting of employed workers but not for the self-employed. We interpret this result as evidence of employer discrimination in favor of taller workers." - Source

I just find it funny how most sites post the studies that don't look into the discrimination angle. As more mainstream sites like CNN and The Guardian post these articles (without focusing on the root cause), they will only make matters worse. It will further perpetuate this cycle, because people will think tall men are inherently superior.

Also notice how the CNN article ends it:

"Could the earnings differences be because of depression or a lack of confidence among shorter or heavier people, as some earlier studies have theorized?"

Call it like it is. This is due to discrimination, because again, self-employed short men do as well as tall ones. Replace this topic with race or something, and they wouldn't dare question whether the victim's "confidence" is to blame.

We all know a confident short man has a Napoleon Complex anyway. If these studies instead found out short men earn more on average, people would attribute it to some chip on short men's shoulders, a need to "compensate" or prove something.

I always imagine these assholes rubbing one out as they giddily type these articles, like it confirms their preconceived notions that taller men are better. Too bad this one line pretty much proves the results are due to prejudice:

"Short women are in luck. There was no real household income difference between short and tall women."

The author tries to portray this as a good thing, but unless she wants to claim the average 5'0 woman is intrinsically more capable than a 5'5 man, there's no reason why this should be about short men rather than short people in general. There's a reason why Dunkin' Donuts in the Philippines requires at least 5'4 men but only 5'2 women. Women are shorter on average, but what's the technical difference? If anything, a 5'2 man is still more physically able on average than a 5'2 woman, not that this should even matter in most mundane jobs.

There's no need to spin this into some convoluted shit about "depression" or "confidence." There's a reason why those traits would even be there in the first place, and personally, I can't "blame DNA."

Update: These "studies" made it to the front page of reddit. They never fail to avoid addressing heightism, instead always opting to go for the "evolushun" narrative, in a way they wouldn't dare do for racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, or even fat women. I expect nothing less from reddit, a majority user base which is proudly and openly heightist. Just like everywhere else, really, online or offline.

"TV Exposure Linked to Female Body Ideal"

Here's the study: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/news/2016/02/femalebodyimageideals/

Wonder what would happen if we flipped the genders and made this about height.

Excerpts:

"For the first time experts have been able to eliminate external factors and specifically pinpoint television as having a direct link with female body ideals."

"Research involved assessing groups with different levels of access to Western media. This included people from an urban area, a village with television access, and a village with little television access."

"It was found that the highest Body Mass Index (BMI) preferences were found in the village with least media access, while those living in urban areas preferred thinner female bodies."

"He said: “Our study shows that television is having a significant impact on what people think is the ideal woman’s body."

This reminds me of all the studies where tribal people don't prefer tall men en-masse: http://heightismandothershit.blogspot.ca/2015/12/numerous-studies-on-height-preferences.html

The more studies pop up, the more I'm convinced our preferences are culturally induced for the most part. I think a good example of this, would be our view on penis size compared to ancient Greeks and Romans. Can you believe the big dicked guys used to be the ones mocked? These ideals may start from either instinct or society, but it's the latter than strengthens and spreads it.

Bullies Have Higher Self-Esteem, Social Success Study Finds

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bullies-have-higher-self-esteem-social-success-study-finds-1.3173387

I don't know about this trend of evo pysch explanations, but I'm only posting this because short men are stereotyped as bullies. Evil short boss, cop, villain, etc. Most short men I see are meek and cowardly, because they've been beaten down by society.

You need to have some sense of power to pick on someone, even those weaker than yourself. I've seen many short men who are afraid kids and women can beat them up, let alone other men. Short men literally think they have no power, except perhaps over babies and the disabled.

Obviously there are outliers for every group, but it's strange how short men get "short man syndrome" while tall men get "gentle giant." Do short men have more self-esteem on average? Rhetorical question.

Numerous Studies On Height Preferences

These studies were done on people much more primitive than ourselves, yet their results are less in favor of tall men than ours. Check them out here: https://unsafeharbour.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/hadza-and-height-preference/

The results are all over the place, much like other "preferences" such as hair color, breast size, etc. Very strange, as modern humans like to justify height worship using "instinct." While these tribes are not total cavemen, as hunter-gatherers, they are much closer than we are. Try conducting these studies on our people. I would bet that every single time, they'd show a massive bias in favor of tall men, yet we are much less primal than the Yali or Hadza.

Contrast all this with height studies conducted on modern women, and the evolutionary claims that come with them ("Women evolved to prefer tall men because they were perceived to be stronger, and naturally they are happy when they have what they like" ).

This is like examining interracial statistics, then when Asian women couple with white men more than they naturally would, everyone claims whites to be genetically superior. Fact of the matter is that modern humans are too tainted by stereotypes, media portrayals, social status and stigma. I doubt tribes, for example, have labels like "Napoleon Complex" or "short man syndrome." They don't consume movies where tall men are portrayed as powerful/romantic, while short men are jesters, sidekicks, etc. The truth is there even without these studies. With them, it becomes blatantly obvious.

More Evolutionary Bullshit About Male Height

Excerpt from here:

"It makes sense that we've been culturally conditioned over tens of thousands of years to correlate height with strength, virility, and survivability. What once factored in as legitimate component in defeating other predators in our angsty hunter-gatherer days is now more or less a non-issue when it comes to one's survival. Unfortunately for our diminutive male friends, society hasn't shaken those vestigial prejudices about their worth..."

This crap will never die even though it makes no sense.

Every time height studies are done on primitive tribes, they do not share modern society's height fetish. What sense does that make? Shouldn't tribes who hunt with spears and arrows care more about height? Try grabbing 1000 people off our streets, then see how many think taller = better (spoilers: they all will). Ironically, domesticated couch potatoes worship height more than actual hunters.

Here's another one:

"By analyzing data from 7,850 married women, researchers from Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea found that the greater the height difference in a heterosexual couple, the happier the wife was. But why? Well, evolution probably has something to do with it. "Women evolved to prefer tall men because they were perceived to be stronger, and naturally they are happy when they have what they like," writes Sohn."

Women may be happier now, but they forgot to mention how tall men are more likely to divorce. Also funny how they came to their conclusion. In South Korea, their tall leading men are 140-160 lbs. For perspective, the average 5'4 Neanderthal was 170 lbs, some were 200 lbs. I just think it's funny how Korea's modern day "alpha males" weigh less than dudes from the cavemen days. Still, I'd bet most women in Asia would pick these guys over a short man with a bigger frame and more mass. Explain that in evo-pysch terms. Who would win in a wrestling match?

This world selects for height and not overall mass or frame, even though that's what actually matters in the wild. I don't see elephants running from giraffes. Women do not have height and weight requirements, they only care about the former. You don't have to be a tall heavyweight to date them, you can be a tall featherweight. A small-boned tall guy will have more dating options than some stocky wrestler from a heavier weight class. That's fine to prefer tall and skinny, but when most women in a country choose that, don't pretend to understand strength or combat.

Here's a good article that brings up this point:

"For example, when it comes to the better-protector argument, the truth is that plenty of short men exist whose overall weight and muscular strength far eclipses that of many tall men, but that logic doesn’t seem to persuade many women to give a short guy a chance."

Now here's the typical "I feel protected just because he's tall" mentality I'm talking about:

Actress Choi Ji-woo said, "I am satisfied to have acted with Lee Sang-yoon. The excellent thing about acting with him is that I will glance up to him because he"s tall and I will feel susceptible and needy of protection".

The guy she's talking about is 160 lbs. People are out their minds. So educated. They should conduct these same studies with Asian women about white men. Wonder if they'd still promote "evolution" when the results come back biased. "Women prefer white men because they are perceived to be naturally better." Publish that shit.

If you want a final red flag, statistically, more women would choose a 6'0 tall guy over a 7'0 tall guy. Explain that in caveman terms. If taller is simply better, why does that happen?

Examples of Heightism as an Institutional Form of Prejudice

Sources were copy/pasted from here.

From: Malcolm Gladwell:

In the U.S. population, about 14.5 percent of all men are six feet or over. Among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, that number is 58 percent. Even more strikingly, in the general American population, 3.9 percent of adult men are 6’2″ or taller. Among my CEO sample, 30 percent were 6’2″ or taller. . Of the tens of millions of American men below 5’6″, a grand total of ten–in my sample–have reached the level of CEO, which says that being short is probably as much, or more, of a handicap to corporate success as being a woman or an African-American.

....that means 2% of Fortune 500 CEOs are men under 5'6", while 4% are women and 7% are African-American. (African-American women make up less than 2%.)

...when corrected for variables like age and gender and weight, an inch of height is worth $789 a year in salary. That means that a person who is six feet tall, but who is otherwise identical to someone who is five foot five, will make on average $5,525 more per year.

Michigan includes height and weight in its equal protection statute

http://www.michigan.gov/mdcr/0,4613,7-138-4954_4997-16288--,00.html

Height restrictions in Ivy League Schools

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in

Sperm Bank height requirements

http://www.salon.com/2011/09/25/sex_cells_interview/

FDA rules that healthy short kids have a disease called "idiopathic short stature"

http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/03/transcripts/3957T1.pdf

Boys committing suicide due to height bullying

http://thesocialcomplex.tumblr.com/post/98522110949/14-year-old-bullied-to-death-for-being-short
http://thesocialcomplex.tumblr.com/post/98520339484/the-truth

Wage gap due to height discrimination greater than gender

http://www.livescience.com/5552-taller-people-earn-money.html ("Height was found to be more important than gender in determining income.")

Shorter candidates less likely to be hired or promoted

http://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/ulr/article/viewFile/246/218 ("One business expert has suggested that an additional four inches in height “makes much more difference in terms of success in a business career than any paper qualifications you have” and that it would be better to be “5 ft. 10 and a graduate of N.Y.U.’s business school than 5 ft. 6 and a Harvard Business School graduate.” Another commentator concluded that “being short is probably as much, or more, of a handicap to corporate success as being a woman or an African American.”") and http://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/height_discrimination_short_guys_finish_last/

Short people less likely to win elections

http://www.omgfacts.com/lists/9414/Since-1900-the-taller-candidate-has-almost-always-won-the-presidential-election-ab637-1

More on height in employment: http://heightismandothershit.blogspot.ca/2014/01/height-discrimination-in-employment.html

New Study: Women Want Taller Men More Than Men Want Shorter Women

There was a popular tumblr post that went along the lines of, "I'm a girl and I don't get butthurt when some guy prefers tall girls. Short men are just sensitive hobbits."

I've always maintained that women care more about height than men, so of course most girls wouldn't understand. There was older research that claimed, and I quote,

"both sexes preferred relationships where the woman was shorter than the man. Curiously, the research also showed that women enforced the norm more strongly than men. Twenty-three percent of men but only four percent of women said they were open to a relationship in which the woman was taller."

The source above was sketchy so most people dismissed it. Well now I have another study, full of the beloved academics that people love:

"we show that women are not only more selective, but also more consistent, than men, in their partner height preferences. Women prefer, on average, a larger height difference between themselves and their partner (i.e. males being much taller than themselves) than men do."

"We extended these findings by showing that the preference for the male being taller than the female in a couple was most pronounced in women. Women, but not men, considered partner heights unacceptable if they resulted in the female partner being taller than the male. This was also evident from the finding that women were more tolerant towards male partner heights that were above their preferred height than towards heights that were below their preferred height. Thus, our data suggest that the male-taller norms observed in married couples in Western societies is more likely to be driven by women rather than by men."

This shit is obvious as hell and didn't warrant a study, but there are always those who spout "everyone has preferences" as if this is like some hair color preference. The amount of women who wouldn't mind dating a 5'0 man are miniscule. Those who would prefer him over a 6'0 guy are virtually nonexistent.

These mere "dating preferences" also seep into all other aspects of society. The Halo Effect does that. This is not good, mostly due to how one-sided society is about body image issues. When only one gender is reeled in, shit only gets worse. Imagine women voting when a short man runs for office, or a short man trying out for a job with a female interviewer. Odds are not great.

Halo Effect

"Someone who is perceived as attractive, due in part to physical traits, may be more likely to be perceived as kind or intelligent. The role of attractiveness in producing the halo effect has been illustrated through a number of studies."

An example of this is how tall men receive "gentle giant" while short men get "short man syndrome," despite the fact that this experiment shows short men are the least likely to be aggressive:

The University of Central Lancashire research for the BBC found taller men were more likely to lose their temper. Men of different heights duelled with wooden sticks but one of the subjects deliberately provoked the other by rapping them across the knuckles. Heart monitors revealed it was the taller men who flew off the handle more quickly and hit back.

After all, in this culture the ideal man is described as "tall, dark, and handsome."

I also once found out that virgin males are the least likely to commit crime (sources here and here). Despite this, we all know how undesirable men are often portrayed as creeps and predators. This is ignoring how most criminals are not virgins.

One of the interesting side effects I've noticed from the halo effect is that certain members of these groups tend to try extra hard to please, because they know they have a bad rep right off the bat. They will be more docile, and it'll take more abuse before they eventually lash back. Unfortunately based on the stats I've posted, these groups are already more passive on average, yet it doesn't seem to be helping much. This is because society does not hate based on a fair ratio. A group with an unattractive trait could do less but they will be judged more harshly.

Undesirable groups should be taught they did nothing heinous characterwise, because, and I quote: ''Unattractive children who are unpopular may wrongly attribute their lack of popularity to some flaw in their character or personality,'' she says. Such an error, she believes, could result in lasting and painful scars. - Source

Others should be made aware of our human biases and preconceived notions. Can you believe many people don't even know what the halo effect even is? Once someone does, hopefully they may start catching themselves judging too quickly, even if it's after the fact.

"Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes" Exercise and What It Means for Height

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Elliott

"On that first day of the exercise, she designated the blue-eyed children as the superior group... She often exemplified the differences between the two groups by singling out students and would use negative aspects of brown-eyed children to emphasize a point.

At first, there was resistance among the students in the minority group to the idea that blue-eyed children were better than brown-eyed children. To counter this, Elliott lied to the children by stating that melanin is responsible for making children blue-eyed and was also linked to their higher intelligence and learning ability. Shortly thereafter, this initial resistance fell away. Those who were deemed "superior" became arrogant, bossy, and otherwise unpleasant to their "inferior" classmates. Their grades on simple tests were better, and they completed mathematical and reading tasks that had seemed outside their ability before. The "inferior" classmates also transformed – into timid and subservient children who scored poorer on tests, and even during recess isolated themselves, including those who had previously been dominant in the class. These children's academic performance suffered, even with tasks that had been simple before."

This was done as an experiment on racial issues, but replace eye color with height, and you'll see why I laugh at studies about tall people doing better in business and IQ tests. Also note how the teacher used the "melanin" excuse to explain how the hierarchy was biological. Doesn't that sound familiar? "Heightism is instinctive and natural, so shut up." Unfortunately, many short men buy into this and stop trying. In fact, many short men themselves parrot these "evolutionary" explanations.

I have no doubt that many short people, whether consciously or subconsciously, think "why bother trying my best? I'd be regarded as intrinsically inferior anyway." An obvious example would be a short man who wants to bulk up and lift heavy weights, but fears being viewed as a "typical ugly compensating stump." His full potential limited due to society's prejudice.

When one group is told they're inferior their whole lives, why wouldn't they perform worse? The answer is obvious, so speaking of eyes, society and all of its people should open theirs.

"Medieval ancestors were just as tall as us says a new study."

http://archive.is/uxQ4c

"Evidence gathered from 3,000 skeletons reveals that human height has varied little over the past 1,000 years."

Studies On Height and Attractiveness In Tribal Cultures

Here are some studies on height's effect on mating in post/pre-industrial societies.

Size does not matter when Hadza foragers are choosing a mate: "Overall we conclude that, in contrast to post-industrial societies, mating appears to be random with respect to size in the Hadza."
Variable Preferences for Sexual Dimorphism in Stature Might Not Be Universal: "Here we report data on relative height preferences in a traditional ethnic group, i.e. the Himba, in which men and women do not show such a strong preference. Thus our data challenges the view of a universal preference for taller men, by suggesting that height preferences may be influenced by environmental and ecological conditions."
Height preferences in humans may not be universal: "Thus, our data do not accord with the suggestion of a universal preference for taller men, but rather suggests that height preferences may be influenced by cultural, environmental, and ecological conditions."
Judgments of Sexual Attractiveness: "Women’s and men’s ratings of each SDS set were similar, which suggests that the “male-taller norm” in Yali tribe was far weaker than in Western cultures. Additionally, the observed preferences were modified by contact with different cultures, age, and accessibility of food resources (pig possession). Our results suggest that human norms of attractiveness are malleable and can change with exposure to different environments and conditions."

If men and women were paired up randomly, 6.5% of the couples would have a shorter male and taller female. Yet in places like Britain, only 4.1% of the couples are as such (source). Now, in the tribe of the last study, 8.2% have a short man and taller woman.

I've seen similar studies using modern day people (always concluding that we innately love tall men), but those are biased. Show our citizens an Asian person and a black person, then ask about various stereotypes. Now show a tribe the same and they wouldn't even know what stereotypes we're talking about. It's similar with height. For example, a more primitive person wouldn't know what "Napoleon complex" or "short man syndrome" means, so instantly their opinion on short men is less tainted than someone in our society. Note that this transcends attractiveness, and applies to height prejudice in general. Claims about biology shouldn't be made using modern day humans, because we are subjected to countless stereotypes, media portrayals, idioms, and other preconceived notions.

Short People Live Longer On Average

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/short-men-are-likely-to-live-longer-because-they-carry-the-longevity-gene-scientists-reveal-9356759.html

Excerpts:

A new scientific study, the largest of its kind and involving more than 8,000 aging American-Japanese men in Hawaii, conclusively showed a direct connection between short height and long life.

There was also no clear cut-off point at which point being even taller stopped you living any shorter, or vice versa. Dr Willcox said: “The folks that were 5-2 and shorter lived the longest. The range was seen all the way across from being 5-foot tall to 6-foot tall. The taller you got, the shorter you lived.”

More studies on height and mortality:

Excerpt from the last study:

"While short stature due to malnutrition or illness is undesirable, our study suggests that feeding children for maximum growth and physical development may not add to and may indeed be harmful to their long-term health and longevity."